Cultural Joke
by IsmAsm
Summary: And now people think that we're allergic to garlic and that we can turn into bats at will. It's beyond insulting." Nikola Tesla. But does he know the half of it?


Disclaimer: I do not own _Sanctuary. _If I did, we wouldn't have to wait for October to roll around to see Season 2. I also do not own _Twilight_ or _Buffy the Vampire Slayer._

Pairings/Characters: No pairings, but pretty much everyone who lasted past an episode and is still alive gets a mention.

Warnings: Not for Twilight fans who can't take a joke.

Summary: Tesla has a question, but he might not like the answer.

Author's Note: This came from a little plot bunny that came into being after listening to Tesla's vampire speech in _The Five_. I was very surprised no one has done this before now. Anyway, this is my first fanfiction, so any help would be nice, especially with characterization.

Cultural Joke

Nikola Tesla was naturally curious. He had also spent well over sixty years pretending to be dead, and this resulted, generally, in a patchy-at-best knowledge of popular culture.

When he told Helen that he found the degeneration of his ancestors into cheap horror movie bad guys "beyond insulting," he neglected to mention how much he knew about vampires in modern day entertainment, at least on television. Or rather, that he watched _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_.

In his defense, the show, from a purely entertainment capacity, was actually pretty good. Also, when you're pretending to be dead, there isn't a whole lot you can do besides eat, sleep, and watch CNN. _Buffy_'s timeslot suited his rather erratic sleeping pattern.

But other than that, and the vague snatches of conversation picked up from passerby and gleaned from airport bookstores, Nikola could honestly say that he had very little idea of the view of vampires in the mind of the public past about 1897.

So really, he had to ask someone.

He settled on Helen's geeky little pet werewolf Henry Foss because he actually respected the man's intelligence. This respect came, in large part, from the time about a week back when Henry had greeted him at breakfast with a large stack of paper. Nikola had only needed to glance at the first page to realize that Henry had just handed him the plans to his Death Ray—sorry, his Peace Ray, though apparently neither name cut much ice with the Allied Forces.

Helen had quickly put the kibosh on their plan when they told her a week later by saying that the Sanctuary really did not need a Death Ray to protect its secrets.

"And if the two of you are so interested in the Sanctuary's safety," she had snapped at them while John had laughed in the background, "than you can go upgrade the security systems."

He had chalked her poor mood up to being upset about Ashley's defection to the Cabal and followed Henry into the elevator, toolbox in hand. Henry looked almost as disappointed as he felt about the denial.

Nikola soon realized that "upgrade" was more in the order of "repair" as Henry led him through the labyrinthine bowels of the Sanctuary to a set of machines that were sparking at him.

They worked in silence for a time, and then Nikola asked Henry, quite unexpectedly,

"What's _Twilight_?"

The werewolf paused in the act of passing the vampire the electrical tape. He didn't say anything for a long time, but stared at Nikola's hand, which currently held both ends of a split live wire. Perhaps he was considering the strange juxtaposition of the question and the fact that the questioner was a natural insulator who could sprout fangs and talons at will. Nikola hoped that Henry would hurry up and get over it, because his hand was starting to go numb from the voltage.

He didn't say that, because any other man would have died from that voltage. Henry was having enough trouble wrapping his head around the concept as it was.

Finally Henry handed over the electrical tape and said, with a shudder, "Trust me, man, you don't want to know." And then he downed the rest of a can of beer.

Nikola considered telling Helen that her adopted son was mixing alcohol and electricity, to spite the boy for not telling him, but decided against it when he realized that he had just called Henry a boy, when, for all appearances sake, they weren't that far apart in age.

He _had_ to know, though. And he couldn't just pick up the book and read it, because he didn't want to have to argue his position with John, a position that really, he didn't have.

There had to be someone in this gigantic house that he could ask. It wasn't like Henry was the only person living there….

Unfortunately, Henry was one of the few he hadn't yet insulted. That automatically crossed off Dr. William Zimmerman, who had not taken kindly to being called disposable back in Bhalasaam, the one person Nikola was pretty sure would not have been too judgmental in answering his question. Shrinks were good for that kind of stuff.

So Will was out. That was alright, though, because he didn't want to spend an hour being psychoanalyzed before he got a chance to ask.

Helen would disapprove of frivolous conversation when they were supposed to be stopping the Cabal. That was just as well—Helen probably considered herself above such information anyway.

He wouldn't ask John even if he did know. For starters, that involved having a real conversation with John, instead of a quibble. And it was utterly absurd that Jack the Ripper would know anything about a book marketed to teenage girls.

That left Clara Griffin. If anyone would know, it would have to be her. Clara was the kind of girl who liked light reading. And if Clara was anything like Nigel, she would only laugh at him a little bit.

He found her where he expected to find her—sitting on the couch in the media room. The television was on E!, which he expected, but it was muted, which he didn't. She was curled up with a rather large tome from the library on the species that could make themselves invisible. He blinked at the book and at her, until she glanced up at him.

"Yes, Skinny?"

He wished she wouldn't call him that. It wasn't respectful to someone of his genius and genetic make-up.

"I have a question," he started.

"About what?" She had gone back to her reading, apparently uninterested in him.

"About popular culture."

"And you automatically came to me?"

He scowled, and then adopted an arrogant air. "I would explain my thought processes to you, but I doubt you could follow them."

She snapped the book shut and gave him her full attention. "Shoot," she said.

He swallowed his pride. It was easier to ask a question to Henry Foss, who was an intelligent being, if a bit unique. Clara Griffin was whiny and uneducated and lazy, and would rather steal from a poor store clerk than actually get a job.

"What's _Twilight_?"

Clara looked highly amused. "Seriously, you don't know?"

"If I did, would I stoop to asking _you_?"

Clara frowned, offended, and Nikola briefly wondered if he had just alienated his last hope for answers.

"Why didn't you just look it up, if you're so curious?"

That was a fair question, he supposed. And the answer made him feel ashamed of his own intelligence. He salvaged it as best he could.

"Such mundane approaches are beneath my genius."

Well, he'd done better. Clara seemed to think so too.

She reached down to the coffee table and picked up her garishly colored laptop. He watched her for a few minutes as she typed in the search criteria. She passed the laptop over to him.

He was quiet for nearly ten minutes as he read. With every passing sentence—teenage girl moves to new town, attractive teenage boy is unnecessarily mean to her; boy turns out to be vampire; girl's blood smells very good, like flowers—his eyebrows traveled farther up his forehead. He paused for a moment on that last bit, because floral-smelling blood didn't sound very appetizing to him, and he knew all about that stuff.

Then he read that the vampires _sparkled_.

Dear God in Heaven, he wanted to hurl. Unfortunately, his gag reflex had gone into shock and refused to cooperate.

He looked up at Clara, who was giggling into her hand. At the look on his face, she gave up pretense entirely and burst out laughing.

"Sorry, Skinny," she chuckled, "but I guess you can see now why your species gets no respect."

He whole-heartedly agreed.


End file.
